What Can We Do To Make Israelis–And Palestinians–Feel Free From Hate?

By Winslow Myers Photos: YouTube Screenshots It’s a queasy feeling to experience up close on the nightly news the further turn of a 70-year-old futile cycle of violence. We sit in our comfortable armchairs in front of the television, voyeurs of the living hell that Hamas and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) have brought down upon innocent citizens in Israel and Gaza. Intrusive cameras take us right to the heart of the agony, the rubble of blasted concrete, the blood of children smeared across hospital floors, the shrieks of matriarchs on both sides mourning the death or kidnapping of whole families. The world is so interconnected that we news junkies cannot help feeling—complicit. My tax dollars help to pay for the avalanche of undiscriminating vengeance unleashed by the Israeli Defense Forces. When spokespeople for the IDF present their rationalizations for the bombing, there’s something a little strange in their eyes. They don’t seem altogether in their right mind, as maybe we Americans weren’t either in the weeks following 9/11. The trauma of October 7, followed by the conundrum of trying to defeat an enemy that holds so many Israelis hostage, along with the embarrassing failure to heed the signs of...